The Beautiful Song That Reminded Glenn Beck ‘Who We Are’ After Robin Williams’ Death

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Glenn Beck on Wednesday played “To Be an American” by the Millennial Choirs and Orchestras while asking “who we are” as a country, and reacting to media coverage of Robin Williams’ suicide.

The music profoundly moved Beck, reminding him of the nation we used to be and what we should strive to be in the future.

“Do we feel like we’re in control of our own lives?” he asked. “Do we feel like we’re in control of our own country, even? And when I say in control, are we working toward the same goals anymore? Are we working toward a country we understand anymore?”

“Abraham Lincoln told us, we don’t have to worry about the outside. We’re too great of a nation,” Beck continued. “We’re too strong of a people. … If we’re ever going to be destroyed, it will come from within. What unites us? What brings us together?”

Glenn Beck speaks on his radio program August 13, 2014. (Photo: TheBlaze TV)

Beck expressed disgust that, after an initial period where “we all came together on Robin Williams’ death,” it “spiraled out of control.” He said he heard people “politicizing” Williams’ death, and was “disgusted” that the media reported “what position [Williams] was in” when he died.

Beck said he got into the office at around 6:00 a.m. and played “To Be an American” by the Millennial Choirs and Orchestras while reviewing the news.

“I listened to the words that we used to all sing when we were kids, but never really listened to,” Beck said, playing the music as he spoke.

“We grew up in a different time, in a world that made sense,” Beck said. “We would sing this in our school assemblies. I don’t even know if it made sense to us, these words when we were kids. They certainly didn’t have any deep meanings. We were in the Cold War. We were burning cities down in the 1960s. But at least in those days, at the same time, man was trying to reach beyond the primordial slime and reach to the heavens, reach to the moon. There was something great to aspire to. Is there something to aspire to together today?”

Beck grew emotional as he continued, reciting some of the words from the song: “America, may God mend thine every flaw. May God confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in-law. Think of that! Liberty’s in-law is self-control. Where is that in St. Louis? Where is that in Washington, or our newsrooms, or in our own homes?”

Beck said “the answer” is in this line of the song: “When all success is nobleness, and every gain divine. When we become those heroes again who, more than self, our country love, and mercy more than life.”

“We as people have such great potential,” Beck remarked. “Historians years from now will look back, and they will judge whether we lived up to our potential or we squandered this profound opportunity. Let it be written of us that, more than self, our country love, and mercy more than life.”

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